It got stuck in my head too with how awful it sounds, that's why I gave you fair warning. The chorus is so bad it's good, the rest of the song doesn't rhyme at all but I might have to learn it anyway. AGGGGGHHH! What am I saying?!?

We often went to the cinema, the screen would light up and we would tremble, but also, increasingly often, Madeleine and I were disappointed. The images had dated, they jittered, and Marilyn Monroe had gotten terribly old. We were sad, this wasn't the film we had dreamed of, this wasn't the total film that we all carried around inside us, this film that we would have wanted to make, or, more secretly, no doubt, that we would have wanted to live.

I watched all of those videos. Obviously "Friday" stands out. So yeah, I'm not sure if I have a soul left. I was completely prepared to enjoy them, and if not enjoy them maybe be amused, but instead I find myself depressed... and it takes a lot to make me depressed.

Remember when people were shooting down Avril Lavigne's debut album? Holy crap, that is a masterpiece compared to this. At least Avril was sincere, and honestly I feel much better now about genuinely liking some of her songs. In the same way that Michael Pollan talks about "edible food-like substances," we need to call this a music-like substance. What disturbs me most is the soullessness of it. Not the soullessness in Rebecca Black's face, necessarily, or even the soullessness of the whole arrangement—it's the soullessness of the song/video itself. The whole vacuous fun/party theme has ruled pop music for at least several years now. I thought Lady Gaga and Kesha were the logical extremes of that... but no, it's this. When her ultra-nasal voice sings "fun fun fun fun" through that forced-at-gunpoint smile, I honestly want to start crying. The most fascinating part is that they seemed intent on culturally transplanting her into some sort of synthetic pseudo-ghetto, wherein 13 year old rich white girls say "my friend is by my right, eyyy" and "we so excited, we so excited, we gonna have a ball today." Also see: Kesha. (Seriously though, was cultural appropriation ever so blatant? And why is no one talking about this?)

No one is talking about it because its last weeks news. are you under the impression that this is popular music? Its just some rich girl who got to pretend to be a pop singer for one day in one video and the only reason it got huge last week was because it SUCKED.

That's all... its an internet meme. Like a million other memes that appear every week.. it's irrelevant now, it never meant anything, it was never taken seriously even as a pop song.

I get that. And I get that people realize it's bad. The reason it's troublesome is that it wasn't created in a vacuum. The pure nakedness of what they're going for (Party/party/fun/fun/randomvacuousgarbage? Check. Suburban white girl pretending to be black? Check. You can go on...) is almost gut-wrenching. This may be an absurd version, but it's not all that different. If the lyrics were better written, if she could put on a better fake smile, if the cultural appropriation were slightly better camoflouged, it would fit in nicely with what is popular. The fact that young people (teenage girls in this case) have accepted (at least on some level) that this is approximately what a pop star is, that this is roughly what you go for, that these are the legitimate ingredients of popular music... that is what's depressing.

This is what I'm saying, in terms of comparison. (And it's especially stark when the "vocals" and lyrics are front and center.) Take early Avril Lavigne—some of her lyrics are (understandably) a little cliche-teen-angsty, but good God, at least she was trying to say something! Why aren't the kids into that anymore?

Avril Lavigne better have 1% better music. She has songwriters, producers, vocal coaches, pro tools, etc. All this girl has is a 13th birthday, her dads credit card and a couple of perverts with final cut pro.

Logged

Let's go to a motel. We don't have to do anything -- we could just swim.

Yeah, but even in the earliest live acoustic performances, Avril doesn't miss a note. And she did co-write her songs (probably the lyrics more than the music).

Skill is not the issue anyway, though. The point is that at least she was trying to express something that was somewhat human. And Avril was certainly not alone in that at the time. Feels like a different era.